In reviewing this thread, I noticed a question that has not been answered and it is actually central to this theme.
Here is an example of the question: How is "banning drag shows" an example of hatred? Another form of it: How is "banning gay-themed books" an example of hatred? Or: How is "banning gay activities" an example of hatred?
Gays refer to themselves as "non-binary" because they don't feel that they quite fit into the male/female spectrum. That is at least in part because that traditional spectrum carries "baggage." We have phrases such as "Be a man about it" and similar cultural attachments to "manhood." There are phrases for women, too; cases where women are admonished to conform to cultural stereotypes. And the non-binary people of the world find that they cannot comfortably do so.
Hatred is non-binary in a different sense... it isn't just about black and white. You don't go from indifference to hatred in one giant step. There are degrees of hatred. Actions speak louder than words. So when you say you don't care to go to a drag show, fine. It isn't "your cup of tea." You avoid the drag show as a matter of preferring something else. In that context, no particular hatred has been expressed. But when you ban drag shows, you have publicly stated that someone else's preferences are unacceptable in society, like they were criminals. Yet drag shows are simply people dressing up differently and doing something in an attempt to reduce FEAR in the community. For reasons I don't always understand, people have a generic FEAR of gays and people in drag... which is most often unwarranted. Milton Berle was a famous comedian of the mid-20th century who did outrageous drag routines among other things, but his popularity was solid throughout his life and career.
When you ban gay activities, when you ban gay books, when you ban formal gay relationships, you express hatred for what some people do. When you analyze it more carefully, the harm you are doing to others is to dismiss them as people with their own ideas, loves, pain, and goals. I am reminded of Shylock's soliloquy in The Merchant of Venice. "If you prick us, do we not bleed?"
We know that gay people exist. They are real people, born in the same way as us but perhaps with some differences in birth characteristics. It is an example of hatred to say that people who look like you and are members of the same species are somehow NOT the same. At an autopsy, you would have a hard time seeing the difference.
We often point to certain books as classics. For instance, The Diary of Anne Frank is a memoir of growing up in a time of religious persecution. The book My Bondage and My Freedom (by Frederick Douglas) tells about life starting as a slave but gaining freedom. But books like Boy Erased: A Memoir get banned in libraries because it involves someone growing up gay. Why is it that we accept the first two but not the last? What makes the first two acceptable but the third one not?
People have thin skin these days. They find an insult in actions done by others, yet a rational analysis suggests that many of the insults are not personally aimed. People these days get bent out of shape because someone else didn't mow their lawn in a certain way, or their hedges aren't trimmed to a certain height. They get bent out of shape because someone else doesn't conform to THEIR standards. And they attempt to shame or, in the case of Home Owner Associations, legally compel someone to "toe the line." In some Islamic countries, they just execute the person who dares to be different, religiously or in terms of gender preference. This is a hatred of being different. We talk about slippery slopes. Hatred is yet another slippery slope because it starts out at mild dislike but ends with riots, executions, and lots of anguish for the victims of it.
Religious conservatives look at gay marriage as a threat to marriage. The "real" threat is that their beloved rigid, nearly iconoclastic images are being shown to be false. A lot of the negativity isn't about a gay person DOING something wrong, but about someone else facing the possibility that they might have been wrong in their thinking. Some people think that the greatest unkindness you can give someone is to have them face a truth that they don't like. And the resistance to that truth is the spark for that hatred to grow.
Gene Roddenberry (R.I.P.) had a vision of a future where people of different races (human and aliens from other planets) got along by suppressing all that fear of being different. Commander Spock treasured his IDIC award - "Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations." It always comes down to that saurian evolutionary heritage in humans, the source of our territoriality and selectively gregarious nature - to stay with your tribe and to shun all others. But if we cannot learn to grow past that "ascendancy of me and mine over thee and thine" viewpoint, we doom ourselves to endless conflict over petty differences.
Time to get off the soapbox, I need to prepare for my daily walk.
